The Southern African Development Community (SADC) on Monday called on western countries to reverse the “discriminatory and unfair” travel bans imposed on eight members of the regional bloc in the aftermath of the discovery of the Omicron COVID-19 variant.
SADC chairman and Malawi’s President Lazarus Chakwera said the decision taken by some European and North American states to ban travel to and from Botswana, eSwatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe was rushed and taken without due consideration of scientific evidence.
“It is unfortunate that these measures have been imposed without any reference to scientific evidence and are clearly discriminatory and unfair to the citizens of our region,” Chakwera said.
He warned that the measures would “embolden sceptics of COVID-19 vaccines and seriously affect the vaccine uptake, not only in Southern Africa but also in the continent and beyond.”
“We call upon the countries that have imposed the travel bans on Southern Africa to rescind their decisions to avoid further economic damage to our region and elsewhere, and to avoid further hampering multilateral efforts to end this global pandemic,” the Malawian leader said.
He noted that while SADC recognised the legitimate principle for each country to protect its population and minimize the risk of importation of new variants of COVID-19, the region did not condone the knee-jerk reaction that followed South Africa’s “discovery” of the new variant.
The Omicron variant has so far been reported in 23 countries around the world, just under two weeks after the announcement by South Africa.
“It is now known that the new variant was already present in various western countries before its discovery in South Africa, including the Netherlands, which have not been subjected to a travel ban.
“Yet even Southern African countries that have not reported a single case if the variant such as eSwatini, Lesotho, Namibia, Malawi and Mozambique have been red-listed for international travel,” Chakwera said.
He said the travel bans are “a show of lack of global solidarity and in contradiction to the International Health Regulations (2005) that mandate countries to share information on diseases of major public health concern in a timely manner.”
JN/APA